Rat Island rises from the icy gray waters of the Bering Sea, a

mass of volcanic rock covered with tundra, midway between Alaska and

Siberia. Once a remote sanctuary for enormous flocks of seabirds, the

island gained a new name when shipwrecked rats colonized, savaging the

nesting birds by the thousands. Now, on this and hundreds of other

remote islands around the world, a massive - and massively

controversial - wildlife rescue mission is under way.

Islands,

making up just 3 percent of Earth's landmass, harbor more than half of

its endangered species. These fragile ecosystems, home to unique species

that evolved in peaceful isolation, have been catastrophically

disrupted by mainland predators: rats, cats, goats, and pigs ferried by

humans to islands around the globe. To save these endangered islanders,

academic ecologists have teamed up with professional hunters and

semiretired poachers in a radical act of conservation now bent on

annihilating the invaders. Sharpshooters are sniping at goat herds from

helicopters. Biological SWAT teams are blanketing mountainous isles with

rat poison. Rat Island reveals a little-known and much-debated side of today's conservation movement, founded on a cruel-to-be-kind philosophy.

Touring

exotic locales with a ragtag group of environmental fighters, William

Stolzenburg delivers both perilous adventure and intimate portraits of

human, beast, hero, and villain. And amid manifold threats to life on

Earth, he reveals a new reason to hope.